


snapshots from a zombie apocalypse

by dorky (dorcas_gustine)



Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:52:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorcas_gustine/pseuds/dorky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Zombies change everything.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	snapshots from a zombie apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Mentions suicide, zombies, gore and Nick's propension for swearing like an Irish docker. :p
> 
>  
> 
> Betaed by veskasa and nekocrouton on lj. And m_steelgrave gave it a look despite the fact that she knows nothing about L4D2 just because it had zombies! :D As you can see zombies are beyond fandom! They could probably bring about world peace. Or the apocalypse.
> 
>  
> 
> Zombieland stuff scattered all over the place, because I could!

Beyond the foggy glass of the window, the sky was that pale shade it gets during winter sunrises. Nick killed his half-finished cigarette in a glass. He had half a packet left and he'd smoked five in just the last fifteen minutes, non-smoking sign be damned.

He checked himself in the mirror and snorted in disgust when he caught sight of the hickey that was just now starting to form. He glanced at the suitcase lying open on the counter next to him. There were at least a couple grand worth of winnings from the night before and a gun lying on top of them.

It looked like a scene out of a movie. He chuckled to himself at the thought. If not for the fact that he was in a stinky bathroom in a stinky diner in _fucking_ Georgia.

He should probably be more cautious, but it was six in the morning on Sunday, and no one was likely to be around.

From outside came the sound of people, footsteps. They sounded aimless, like someone who was just stumbling around, so it was more likely to be people who had spent the night partying and now were here to get some breakfast.

What made them stay out until six in the morning partying, Nick wasn't sure. He'd called it a night around three o'clock. If he'd been in Vegas, he would have _started_ the night around that time. Fucking Savannah, he didn't know what had possessed him to go all the way down there.

The sound of glass breaking came from somewhere far away. He frowned.

Whatever.

Nick lit another cigarette and closed the suitcase leaving the gun out. He calmly finished his smoke, watching the gray curls idly rise in the air before him, the gun next to his hand on the bathroom counter.

So long, Savannah, Georgia. Let's not keep in touch.

And then the door imploded in a rain of wood splinters. A man stumbled inside, a weird gargling coming from his throat.

"What the _fuck_?!"

The man puked all over the floor. Nick jumped up and took a couple of step backwards to save his shoes from the- what the hell? _Blood_?

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

The man didn't reply, and when he looked up, Nick suddenly realized that there was something very, very wrong with him.

"Well, shit," Nick said.

He raised his gun.

 

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"So, like, what d'ya do for a livin'?" Ellis asked, scratching the side of his neck.

Nick just stared at him.

"Hey, jus' making conversation, man!"

"So, like, what makes you think I want to have a conversation with ya?" Nick said, imitating Ellis' tone and accent. The mocking tone wasn't lost on Ellis and he glared at him before looking away and going back to stand guard in front of the toilets.

'When you have to go, you have to go,' Ellis had wisely said, and they had made a pit stop; Coach and Rochelle taking the first turn.

"It won't flush," Rochelle said, slightly embarrassed, when she emerged first and got her weapon from Nick.

"My turn," Nick said, turning around.

"Hey, you gonna take your shotgun in there with you?" Ellis asked, suddenly.

"I never go anywhere without my gun, I'm a professional killer!" Nick shot back.

Nick's chuckles echoed among the stalls as he walked in with Ellis' shocked face clearly fixed in his mind.

 

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"No! Don't-"

But it was too late, the fat bastard exploded right in Nick's face, raining blood, bits of organs and bile all over him and Coach.

Ellis cursed and apologized all in one breath, but Nick was too occupied to listen to him, fending off the horde of zombies using his shotgun as a club.

Just a few seconds later everything was over. A blob of something Nick was surely better off not knowing the origin of fell off Coach's nose onto the asphalt with a sickening _splotch_.

"Damn, kid," Coach said.

Ellis just gave him a sheepish smile.

"You got something here," Ellis murmured, picking a piece of fuck-tell-me-it's-not-someone's-_brain_ from Nick's cheekbone and wiping his finger on the front of Nick's suit.

Nick glared at him as well as he could through the Boomer vomit and the already coagulating blood. "I'm sending you the dry-cleaning bill, Overalls."

"Sorry," Ellis said again.

Behind him Rochelle was failing very hard at hiding her smirk.

 

 

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"Man, this is a _sweet_ ride!"

"Hear how she purrs!" Ellis exclaimed and, yes, he _caressed_ the dashboard for what had to be _at least_ the tenth time.

Nick nudged Rochelle with his elbow. "I won," he said, smirking.

Rochelle rolled her eyes.

"Ten bucks says that he calls her his sexy baby next," he went on.

"I'm not betting my imaginary dollars on _that_," Rochelle snorted at the same time Ellis said, "You're one sexy lady, baby."

Nick laughed out loud, but he was ignored.

"Man, Coach," Ellis went on, "can you imagine? I'm sitting in _Jimmy Gibbs Junior's car_! In Jimmy Gibbs Junior's _seat_!"

"I bet it drives like a dream," Coach said.

"It does."

"I think I shot the motherfucker in the face," Nick said idly. And he'd been a tough one to take down. "Jimmy Gibbs whatshisname."

The car stopped abruptly with a screech of tires, and Nick nearly broke his nose when he smashed his face in the front seat. "What the fuck?!" He exclaimed.

When he looked up, Ellis was looking at him as if he'd just confessed he'd killed his whole family and ate them or something. "What?"

"You- you- you-" Ellis said, his eyes getting wider and his lips trembling at every 'you'.

Rochelle was glaring savagely at him, mouthing 'what the hell asshole'.

Nick sighed. "Nah," he shrugged. "Just joking, he probably wasn't even in the mall yet when the zombies came."

"What the hell, man?" Coach said.

Ellis remained silent, staring at him as if trying to understand whether he was lying or telling the truth. Nick met his eyes silently.

"Shit, man," Ellis finally said with a relieved sigh, "for a moment there I thought you was tellin' the truth. You just can't say shit like that."

"Yeah," Nick snorted. "Whatever. Drive."

Ellis muttered something he couldn't quite make out, but Nick had the suspicion it was some sort of endearment meant for the car, and then the engine roared back to life.

Rochelle and Coach were still glaring at him, but he ignored them, staring instead at the deserted road. Once in a while they surpassed a zombie or two at the side of the road. Some didn't seem to notice them, others tried to give chase to the car.

When they met a couple in the middle of the road, Ellis just shot them, one hand on the wheel, while most of his upper body was out of the window to take better aim. He roared in joy when they sped past the bodies.

Stupid kid.

 

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"You know, Nick," Ellis said as they weaved through the line of parked cars, "I didn't really believe what you said."

Nick glanced at him. "Oh?" He asked, uninterested. He couldn't care less if this kid thought he'd killed his redneck stock car driver idol, it had been a zombie out to eat Nick's face and it had eaten the lead of his gun, instead.

"You really ain't a killer for hire," Ellis said, nodding.

Nick stared at him. There were no words. "Really."

"Yeah, you're a good guy," the kid said, smiling his wide, honest smile.

Nick started laughing and couldn't stop for the life of him. Not even when there were tears in his eyes, not even when he had to lean against a van for support.

"It ain't funny!" Ellis kept screaming.

"Shut up, you're gonna attract more zombies!" Coach and Rochelle kept yelling.

In the end, they had to wait a good five minutes until Nick had finally regained his breath.

Ellis glared at him for the better part of an hour.

 

 

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"If I survive this," Rochelle said, breaking the long silence, "I'm going to win every prize there is to win for journalism."

"You go, girl." Coach gave her a pat on the back. The move seemed to take a lot out of him. Nick wondered if the sleeping pills he'd slipped him had finally started to have effect. The man needed his sleep after nearly getting flattened by a Charger. He was no use to them if he was too tired to hold his gun straight.

"Oh, right," Ellis grinned. "You're a reporter!"

Rochelle nodded, her earrings clinking against the barrel of her shotgun. "I'm gonna write a book."

"Cool!" Ellis exclaimed. "Maybe they're gonna make a movie! Who's gonna play me? I don't care as long as they make him totally badass."

Rochelle laughed. "I don't know, maybe Brad Pitt?"

"Nah," Nick snorted. "Angelina most likely. She's got the lips for the part."

"Hey!" Ellis exclaimed, punching Nick on the arm.

It didn't even hurt, but Nick couldn't let it pass. He smacked Ellis on the back of his head, and pretty soon they were locked in a half fight, half tug-o'-war the like of those Nick hadn't participated in since he'd left elementary school.

They stopped only when they heard both Coach and Rochelle laughing at them.

Nick huffed in annoyance and straightened his suit while Ellis got the baseball cap he'd lost in the scuffle and pulled it down tightly on his head.

"You seem awfully fond of that hat," Rochelle commented, and Nick could have smacked her, because now of course they'd be subjected to another one of the kid's endless and pointless stories.

When Nick glared at her, Rochelle's expression was too innocent to be genuine.

"Yeah," Ellis said with a smile. "Y'see, me and my buddy Keith have this shop. Sometimes my friend Dave comes to help too, when he remembers to wake up before lunch. We always have a shitload of work to do, but it's fun. I remember this one time, a guy came in - I shit you not - pushing his truck. He'd been pushin' it for _miles_! So we get to work on the truck, right? And Keith goes around to pop the hood, and then he starts screamin' like a freakin' banshee. Turns out there was a fucking squirrel inside, if you can believe it. Biggest fucking squirrel I ever seen in my life, a demon squirrel I swear. Its eyes were fucking red! So Keith was like, running around with the squirrel on his face, and I'm running after him trying to get the little fucker off with a wrench, and then - I shit you not-"

Nick started dozing off around the middle of the story. They worked as fine as any sleeping pills, at least.

 

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"For fuck's sake, Overalls, do you have a story for everything?"

Ellis seemed to think about it. "Um, yes. That's it, pretty much."

 

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The morning brought an unexpected gift in the form of instant coffee left by someone among the rest of the food supplies in the safe house. Nick poured some in his water and then he shook the bottle as if it were a cocktail shaker.

The coffee was cheap and it tasted foul, especially at room-temperature, but it was caffeine. He passed it around wordlessly and smoked a cigarette silently as he observed Rochelle checking Coach's injuries.

"Here," Ellis said, handing him one of those health bars that tasted like bird food.

Who was he kidding, it probably _was_ bird food.

"Breakfast of champions, huh?" Nick snorted, but he accepted the 'food' anyway.

Next to him Ellis coughed. "Man, that smells like one of those tonguey dudes," he complained, frowning at Nick's cigarette.

Nick crumpled the now empty packet and threw it at him. It bounced off the kid's chest and fell under the table standing against the wall.

"Hey, why are you always such an ornery bastard?"

"Because you're annoying," Nick replied, blowing the last of his smoke in Ellis' face and then standing up. "We good to go?"

"Watch that arm, Coach," Rochelle told him. "You took a bad hit."

Coach rolled his shoulders and picked up his shotgun. "Ain't gonna be a problem," he reassured her, but then again Nick figured he didn't have a choice anyway.

It was either not going to be a problem or it would be, and Coach would likely die a painful, bloody death.

"Ready to kick some ass?" Coach asked, but he opened the safe room door without waiting for their reply.

"Hell yeah!" Ellis exclaimed, reloading his shotgun one-handed.

Nick had to admit it would have been badass if Ellis hadn't been such an annoying dork.

Nick followed them out. "Time to kill some zombie motherfuckers," he agreed.

And to try and reach an evac center that hadn't been overrun already, even though Nick would never bet on their odds; optimism had no place in a gambler's life, and Lady Luck was a fickle woman.

 

 

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Nick was the first one to notice Coach wasn't with them anymore, and only because he'd dispatched the zombies that had headed for him while Ellis and Rochelle were still fending off the infected surrounding the two of them.

He hesitated for a moment, but they seemed to be on top of their game - and was that a fucking _clown_?! As if clowns weren't already terrifying, now they had to be _zombies_. Nick turned back to look for Coach.

And then he heard it, a choked voice and gasps and there was Coach, struggling while the long, slimy tongue of a Smoker was slowly pulling him up towards the roof of the safe house they'd just got out of.

"For fuck's sake!" He growled, speeding up and lighting one of the Molotovs he'd found lying around. "Burn, you fucking bastard!"

With a shout of rage he chucked it towards the point he guessed the Smoker was. The molotov made a wide arch in the air before shattering and setting the whole roof ablaze. Nick's guess must have been true, because only a few seconds later he heard the screech of the infected die and Coach fell to the ground, coughing and hacking from his impending hanging.

"Strike out, motherfucker!" Nick screamed at the now dead Smoker as he ran to Coach to help him stand and free himself from the long tongue.

"You got some arm there, kid," Coach said, when he could finally talk without coughing at every breath.

Nick snorted. "Yeah, I was good at baseball in my day."

"Say cheese!" Rochelle called out to them, and when they turned towards her with a confused frown they saw the camera phone in her hand.

Well, shit.

"Holy shit, man!" Ellis whooped as he checked the photo from above Rochelle's shoulder. "That's _awesome_!"

"Delete that photo right now," Nick ground out. "How come your phone still works?" His was probably a mess of melted plastic and circuitry, by now.

Rochelle chuckled and put the phone away. "It's not mine, I found it charging in the safe house. Someone must have forgotten it behind. And I'm not deleting it, I'm a reporter and this is report material."

The photo was dark, and it wasn't clear which of the two men pictured in it was supporting the other as a halo of flames backlit their silhouettes in the darkness of a nightmarish amusement park.

It was the first of many.

 

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Among snapshots of strangers: Coach adding some writing to the walls of a safe room, Ellis and Rochelle bent over the various pieces of a shotgun as he taught her how to clean it, Ellis giving Nick bunny ears as he valiantly tried to ignore him.

Zombies in roads, courtyards, highways; there was even the blurry photo of a Witch.

Slowly, the phone filled with snapshots of their days, until the battery died without any hope of being resurrected any time soon.

The last photos were confused shots of limbs and Nick and Ellis scuffling, captured like a fall in slow motion, until only Rochelle was left in the picture, laughing and not looking tired for the first time in days.

The photos were a little shaky, because Coach had been laughing, as well.

 

 

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"I ever tell you 'bout that time me and-"

"I ever tell you 'bout that time Ellis shut up and didn't talk for _an entire hour_? Man, good times."

Ellis blinked at Nick's mocking tone, but the important thing was that he shut up and sat down to fondle his gun or something. Nick couldn't care less.

From across the room Rochelle was glaring at him.

Nick ignored her and stepped outside to have a smoke, only to remember at the last moment that he was out of cigarettes. He stood in the cool night air for ten minutes, listening to far away gurgles and the silence engulfing them.

Standing next to the door, he could hear Ellis' voice drone on as he told another one of his stories.

 

 

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When Coach produced a deck of cards seemingly out of nowhere, Nick snorted aloud. "Oh, you don't want to play against me, man."

Coach raised an eyebrow at him. "You let me decide about that."

Rochelle and Ellis had drawn closer too, and sat cross-legged on the floor as Coach shuffled the cards.

"All right," Nick said, sitting down. A few weeks ago he'd have rather cut his own hand off than sit on the filthy floor, but now his suit was more dirt and blood and internal organs than actual suit. "But when I win all of your imaginary dollars don't say I didn't warn you."

About an hour later, even Coach had the grace of looking impressed.

"And that's a total of- Two imaginary grands for me, right?" Nick said, gathering up the cards and shuffling.

"Oh, no way I'm letting you deal ever again," Coach said, taking the deck out of Nick's hands and dealing the cards around.

"I raise by eighty imaginary dollars," Rochelle said, when Coach uncovered the second card.

Nick shook his head before any of the others could speak up. "Coach and Ellis are going to fold with their worthless hands, the only one who's going to see that is me, and trust me you don't want to come up against me with a pair of sixes."

Rochelle and Coach threw down their cards with an annoyed huff.

"Aw, it's no fun like this," Ellis complained, "can't we just play for fun?"

"You don't play poker for fun, you play it for money," Nick told him.

"We're playing with _imaginary_ dollars," Rochelle said, motioning to their invisible chips stacks.

"Imaginary or not, it's still money," Nick said. "Look, you guys wear your cards on your faces. Coach is a little better at bluffing, but he starts tapping his left index finger when he's got some points. Ro, you should stop looking at your cards every few seconds and Ellis," Nick frowned, "well, let's just say that you have so many tells that someone who doesn't know you might be confused enough for your unintentional bluff to work."

"Who died and made you the Poker Police, man?" Ellis said, taking off his cap and scratching the back of his head.

"This happens to be my job, dickhead."

Ellis blinked stupidly at him. "What, you mean there's such thing as the Poker Police? No _way_ man!" He gave a startled laugh.

"No, Ellis," Nick said, "there is no such thing as the Poker Police. I'm a gambler, that's what I meant."

"I thought you were a professional killer," Ellis said, a little too innocently.

"Shut up and chip in, redneck."

 

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"AK-47 Of Love here!" called out Ellis, pointing his flashlight so it cast a pool of light on the decomposed body of what probably once was a human being.

A survivor, pretty much like them.

Nick knelt down next to it to have a look. The AK-47 was fully loaded, and there were a few cartridges peeking out from a pocket of the dead man's coat. He grimaced at the smell, but he took everything, mouthing a 'thank you' as he stood up again.

"Your death, my life," he told the dead man.

"You're an asshole even to dead guys," Ellis said, but he was grinning slightly when Nick turned to glare at him.

"Kiss my ass," Nick deadpanned.

"Of Love," Ellis said.

"'Kiss my ass of love'?" Coach frowned, "the hell does that mean?"

"We're in the Tunnel Of Love," Ellis replied, as if that were enough to answer the question.

Coach kept frowning at him.

"Boomer Of Love!" Rochelle exclaimed, but she had already taken aim and shot the fat bastard to hell. "Dead."

"Cut that shit out," Coach said.

"Into the swan maintenance room Of Love!" Nick called out to them.

"Et tu, Nick?"

 

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The lights of the chopper filled the stadium. Together with the light shows and the fireworks from the concerts, it seemed as if someone had pulled on a switch and turned off the night, replacing it instead with a blinding brightness.

"Chopper is here!" Nick yelled.

And now Nick could actually hear the noise of the rotors over the deafening music. Really, he was blind and almost deaf, it was a wonder how anyone would willingly inflict these Midnight Riders guys or whatever upon themselves.

Ellis sprinted past him, brandishing a guitar and smashing the zombies in his path to the helicopter to bits. "Best concert _ever_!" he roared, laughing very much like a madman.

Then again.

"Come on!" Nick yelled, without much hope to be heard over the noise. "Chopper is here!"

Ahead of him, Ellis was taking the steps two by two and was almost to the chopper, so Nick turned around to provide covering fire for Coach and Rochelle bringing up the rear.

Blinded and deafened as he was, it was purely by chance that the giant boulder of concrete flying through the air missed him. In fact, it smashed only a few feet from him, pelting him with shrapnel.

"Tank!" Coach yelled.

"Yes! Thank you!" Nick yelled back. "I see that now!"

"Git your asses in here, y'all!" Ellis shouted from the helicopter. "I gotcha covered!"

With what, Nick couldn't quite fathom, since he'd last seen him using a _guitar_ as a weapon, and that had been merely a few seconds before.

And then he saw the grenade launcher, and Ellis' big, manic grin behind it.

Nick started to run. "Who the fuck gave him a grenade launcher?"

"I found it!" Ellis yelled. "Fire in the hole!"

Nick glanced back in time to see the Tank stumbling back against the force of the explosion. It howled in pain. _Great_, now it was pissed off even _more_.

"Who the fuck leaves a grenade launcher lying around?!" He asked loudly as he finally made it to the chopper.

Ellis reloaded and fired again.

The Tank got angrier.

"Tank! Tank! Tank!" Nick screamed.

Rochelle made it and she started screaming too. It was a cacophony of screaming and yelling and Ellis laughing his ass off as he shot time and time again. The Tank kept advancing though, and for a moment Nick thought that it was going to reach them before Coach could get in, that it was going to take down the chopper, it was just so _close_

Ellis aimed the grenade launcher down, almost right in the Tank's face. "FUCK YOU!" He roared.

The Tank's head exploded in a cloud of blood and burned flesh, and its body crushed and swept away several infected as it fell down the stands.

"_Nice_ job, kid," came Coach's voice as he finally climbed inside.

Nick stared wide-eyed at Ellis' stupid grinning face. "God bless fucking rednecks," he said.

 

 

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Of _course_ the pilot was a zombie and the helicopter crashed in a _swamp_; things were going too smoothly after all, they had been _saved_. The others hadn't said anything, but Nick guessed that they didn't know where the hell the had ended up, either.

Just fucking great.

Nick dodged an infected coming his way and ended up ankle deep in fucking _mud_. "God must have a sick sense of humor," he said, taking in the gray-brown tint his pants had become. "A sick, sick sense of humor."

"It's just mud, Nick," Ellis told him.

Nick looked up at him, taking in the blood and the brains and the pieces of people - infected, yes, but still people - they were all spattered with. He swallowed the comeback he had on the tip of his tongue. "Just mud, yeah," he said with a sigh.

He felt the first drops of rain falling on his face.

"Fucking _great_," he muttered, reloading his gun.

 

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"You know what I miss right now?" Rochelle asked, her words slurred. She sounded drunk.

Coach exchanged a worried glance with Nick over her head, remaining silent, but Nick could guess his doubts. She'd taken a bad hit from a Charger and they had probably exaggerated with the pain-pills dosage, but they feared her arm was broken. Ellis had splinted it, and they had a lot of pain pills anyway.

"No, sweetheart," Coach said, softly stroking her hair, "what do you miss?"

"The house cocktail they served during the happy hour in the pub near my place," Rochelle murmured and then she chuckled softly. "It had a tiny umbrella and it was neon green."

Coach seemed to relax all at once, and Nick had to smile a little too. Their girl was going to be fine.

"I miss Twinkies," Coach said.

Nick snorted and turned towards Ellis. The kid's attention seemed to be elsewhere and the silence stretched until it became painfully noticeable. When finally Ellis noticed they were all staring at him, he blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he didn't know what to say.

"I miss sex," Nick said, eliciting a groan and eye-roll from Coach.

"Yeah, that too," Rochelle said with a chuckle.

"I'll keep that in mind," Nick told her. "Now you get some rest, I'll take first watch."

"That's awfully selfless of you," Coach said.

"Hey, take the first watch, you sleep the rest of the night uninterrupted," Nick winked at him and went to sit by the safe room door. "Good night."

Coach helped Rochelle to get into her sleeping bag, then he climbed into his own. Meanwhile Ellis had remained sitting in the same place, staring at the wall as if it held the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.

Even if it was a warm night, it was mid-autumn and with just his t-shirt, he looked cold.

"Get some sleep, Overalls," Nick told him, "aren't you tired?"

Ellis shrugged. "Not really," he said, then he tilted his head as if trying to observe the wall from another perspective.

What he was looking for was lost on Nick, it was just a fucking wall, it was the same thing from every angle, he figured.

"Can I tell you a story?" Ellis asked, managing to render Nick speechless for a few moments.

"I- what?" Nick said. "Ellis, you've got it wrong. It's usually the other guy who tells the story, not the one who has to go to sleep."

"I jus' wanna tell you a story," Ellis said, looking at him. "You never tell stories, and they'd be all lies, anyway, right? My stories are 120% true."

Nick snorted. "Oh, are they?"

"Yeeeah, Nick," Ellis said, a small grin playing on his lips.

Nick smirked despite himself.

"It's a story about poker," Ellis said in a conspiratory whisper.

"Oh, is it?" Nick sighed, bracing himself for a couple of mind-numbing minutes. Hopefully this story wouldn't cause him to fall asleep while he was on guard duty. Not that anything worth mentioning ever happened on guard duty.

"Yeah," Ellis said, scooting closer to him. "You know how there are all these types of poker, Texas Hold 'em, and then strip-poker, and regular ol' poker, and the poker my granma played which included sherry for some reason. So like this one time, me and Keith decided to invent our own version. It was awesome shit man, it was so _epic_. We made this rule where the loser could try and shoot a can of Cola from twenty feet instead of losing, but it was much harder than you'd think because we wasn't playing for money, but for whisky, and by the end of the game we had drunk most of our winnings. And like, Keith aimed for the can but shot Mrs. Harrison's dog instead and man, was that dog pissed. He chased Keith around and Keith kept shooting and missing, and I was laughing so much I couldn't see a fucking thing. In the end the dog got him and Keith needed like, a thousand stitches. We never played poker again after that."

Ellis fell silent, and while Nick had lost a couple of passages in the whole mess of hand-gestures and Southern accents, at least he hadn't fallen asleep right in the middle of it.

"Happy now?" Nick asked.

A chuckle from the dark silhouette next to him. "Yeeeah."

"You told the story, now close your eyes and sleep for fuck's sake or I'll beat you with-" Nick fumbled around and took a hold of the first thing he could find, "-this," he concluded, brandishing a can of chicken soup.

He frowned at it like it had somehow betrayed him; Ellis chuckled softly.

"'Night, Nick."

"Yeah, sweet fucking dreams to you too, Overalls," he grunted.

 

 

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The water probably stopped working during the night, and when Nick went in the tiny bathroom to refill his water bottle he turned and turned the handle and stood there like an idiot as not even a drop came out.

He cursed under his breath and got out to tell the others.

Both Coach and Ellis echoed his sentiment - Ellis in a louder and more colorful way. Rochelle was still sleeping.

"We could go on, hopefully we'll find some running water," Coach said, scratching the back of his neck.

"_Right_," Nick snorted. "And then we'll walk long enough to get to the end of the filming set and everyone will yell, 'Surprise! This is all fake, you're in America's brand new reality show!' and we'll get fucking _cake_!"

Coach frowned at him. "A 'no' would have sufficed, Nick," he said.

"Um," Ellis started, raising a hand like they were in fucking _school_, "I think we passed a house with running water on the way here, yesterday. It's not far."

"If we have no water here, it's very likely there won't be any water there, either," Nick said. "That's how things work. We get saved by an helicopter, the pilot is a zombie, we crash in a swamp, there's no drinkable water for _miles_. I can't fucking believe this, we're gonna die of _thirst_."

"Wow Nick, don't get all Mr. Negative or nothin'" Ellis said.

Nick just glared at him.

"We can't go back," Coach said, "it'll be a waste of precious time."

"It ain't far."

"Well, Coach," Nick shrugged. "Best the devil you know," he said, pointing to the way they had come, "or the one you don't?" he pointed at the exit.

"Just ten minutes, fifteen tops," Ellis said, and for a moment Nick got the distinct impression that he and Ellis were like two kids asking their dad permission to stay up past their bedtimes to watch TV.

'Just five minutes more, dad.'

'The movie is almost over, dad.'

"Fuck this," Nick said, grabbing the AK-47 he'd found in a house. Rednecks were crazy as horses, but the South was probably the best place to get stranded during the zombie apocalypse, at least in regards of random firearms left lying around. "Overalls, you're coming with me. Coach, you stay here with Rochelle. If we don't come back in two hours, assume the zombies got us or that I shot the kid for annoying me once too many and move on."

He fervently hoped it really was 'ten minutes, fifteen tops', otherwise they were screwed and Nick was the biggest idiot ever for trusting Ellis.

"Two hours?" Coach repeated, arching an eyebrow. "And how can I tell the time when I don't have no working watch?"

"Here," Nick said, taking off his Rolex and slapping it on Coach's palm. "I'll be wanting that when I get back."

Coach seemed to have some protests to make, but then he glanced at Rochelle still curled up on her sleeping bag and at their almost empty bottles on the table. He sighed and nodded. "Don't you boys make me regret this," he said.

Ellis glanced between the two of them, then he went to the table where all their stuff was sitting and he took his shotgun. He checked it for ammunition and when he was satisfied, he gave a firm nod to Nick. "I'm ready," he said.

"You're taking point, Overalls," Nick told him. "No 'accidentally' shooting me in the back anymore."

"It was an accident!" Ellis exclaimed. "And I just barely scratched you."

"And thank god for that," Nick muttered. When you were handling a shotgun, the difference between 'barely scratched you with a stray pellet' and 'oh, didn't you use to have a head once?' was very slight. "I swear, kids and their fucking guns."

Ellis was indeed taking point, paying attention to their surroundings, so all Nick could see was his back as he quickly weaved through the mud of the swamp. Nick could picture his frown, though, the way his mouth arched down and his forehead scrunched up in an almost confused expression. Nick had always been good at reading people, he had to with the life he led, but he'd never been quite so fast at _knowing_ them, as he knew Ellis, Coach and Rochelle.

He didn't know much of their lives before this - not even of Ellis' for all his endless talking, most of his stories seemed to revolve around that Keith guy - but he knew when Coach's knee was starting to bother him, he knew that he could blindly trust Ellis with a sniper rifle, but that he got a little carried away when he got his hand on a shotgun. He knew that sometimes Rochelle's finger twitched uncomfortably on the trigger, and he knew that it pissed her off and that she thought no one had noticed it.

He knew each of them by the way they breathed and they moved and they smelled. He knew how they moved, and how to move with them and, he supposed, they knew him.

It was strange, this kind of knowledge, of kinship, born of death, desperation and need for survival. He didn't know much about them - not even their surnames, or their real names, in Coach's case - but he knew the deepest part of them, the only thing left after you had stripped everything away.

"I ain't no kid," Ellis complained, jolting Nick out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, _right_," he snorted. "You're what, ten years younger than me? Fifteen? You're a kid."

"That don't mean I'm a kid, that just means you're _old_."

 

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"'Just ten minutes, fifteen tops', right?" Nick snorted. "Yeah, sure Ellis, show me the way, I'm sure it's the best idea ever!"

Ellis glared at him as he reloaded his shotgun, back leaning against the wall. "Hey, it was your idea!" he said. "And it woulda been fifteen minutes, if there weren't zombies."

"We wouldn't be here if there weren't zombies!" Nick yelled at him, as he used the butt of his AK-47 to break the window glass and he leaned out to rain down bullets on the horde charging them. "Or at least, _I_ wouldn't."

Ellis reloaded his shotgun with a sharp flick of his wrist. "Houses are on the other side of the road," he told Nick. "Follow me!"

And then with a kick, he took the door down and he ran outside, shooting zombies as he crossed the street. For a moment, Nick was left standing there with his mouth hanging open. Then he realized three things very fast: that Ellis was rapidly emptying his shotgun, that it took ages to reload and that Coach was going to have his ass if Nick came back without the annoying hick with not enough sense to understand that running _towards_ a horde meant having a deathwish.

"You fucking idiot!" he screamed as he ran outside after Ellis. "Damn you and the day your parents decided not to watch TV instead!"

Nick emptied a clip just to make himself a pathway, and another one to cover Ellis as he reloaded.

"It's just over there!" Ellis yelled, pointing with his gun.

"Move, move, move!" Nick told him, his voice getting progressively louder as he caught sight of a Charger running straight for them. "Fuck!"

He sidestepped at the last moment and the Charger plowed through a fence, a pink flamingo and crashed right into the wall of the house. Ellis kept shooting until it fell lifeless to the ground.

"Keep running!" Nick told him, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the house. They had another horde on their heels and he'd heard the manical laughter of those little back-humpers among the moans and the growls of the more common infected. A Jockey would be the perfect ending to this big, fucking mess right now.

Oh, and they were down to half their ammo, of course.

When they finally reached the house they dived in through the front door, more than entered, and as soon as they were both inside, Nick slammed the door closed and leaned against it with all his weight.

The thin wood wasn't going to last long though if the bastards kept pounding on it to get in. Nick pushed against the door with all of his strength and in the next few moments he basically ran through all of the curses he knew of.

And where the fuck was Ellis?

"Overalls!" he called out. "A little help here?"

"Coming!" Came Ellis' voice from another room, and then he walked in dragging behind him the biggest gas cylinder Nick had ever seen in his life.

"Oh no, don't tell me-"

"Oh, _yeah_," Ellis grinned and tossed the gas cylinder out of the window.

Several things happened at once. An infected managed to smash a hole through the door, his arm closing around Nick's throat like a vise. As Ellis aimed, the Jockey Nick had heard jumped through the window and landed on Ellis' face.

Ellis' screams were muffled. He was stumbling around the room and between that and the arm cutting off his air, Nick could barely take aim, much less hope to kill the Jockey without hurting Ellis.

He threw his AK-47.

It bounced off the Jockey, causing it to lose its hold, and slid under the table in the far side of the room.

Ellis stumbled and coughed once, twice, and then he pointed his shotgun down and shot the Jockey's face off. Only then did he seem to notice Nick's situation. His eyes widened and, for just a moment, Nick could see that Ellis did indeed know fear.

Ellis stood in the middle of the room, uncertain, until he made as if to help Nick, but zombies were climbing through the window and Nick gestured frantically to shoot, shoot the goddamn zombies all to hell.

Nick's vision was going gray at the edges now, and another arm had broken through the door and was scratching at his chest, his arms, and fuck that was it.

With a loud bang and vibrations that shook the entire house, the gas cylinder blew up, raining blood and limbs and organs and glass shards through the window, with the result that now the kitchen, and most of Ellis really, looked like a Pollock painting.

The arms holding Nick had fallen slack too, and he didn't feel like investigating whether it was just because the infected was killed in the shock-wave or just because the arms weren't attached to anything anymore.

Ellis came to him, wide-eyed and grinning as if his face was going to split, helped him up, and by now Nick was grinning too.

"Did'ya see that?" Ellis asked, jubilant. "Did'ya fucking _see_ that?"

"I saw that," Nick said and then they were both laughing, deep, side-splitting laughter. "I fucking saw that."

And then Nick's head thudded painfully against the door and Ellis was kissing him.

Ellis was _fucking_ kissing him.

With a growl, Nick's hands shot forward, roughly grabbing Ellis around the waist and pulling him forward. The movement almost upset their balance, but Ellis was fast and he caught himself with a hand against the door.

"Fu-" Ellis breathed against his lips, but Nick didn't give him the time to finish, biting and devouring his lips, pushing his tongue past them.

Ellis tried to mumble something around the kiss, but Nick couldn't say he was surprised.

"Shut up, Overalls," he growled and then, to make his point, he threaded his fingers through Ellis' curls at the base of his neck and pulled, earning access to the long line of his neck.

"Nick," Ellis panted. "Fuck, fuck," he went on, tugging at Nick's shoulders and dragging the both of them down on the floor.

"Will you shu-"

And then Nick heard it.

The growl, still distant thank god, and the ground shaking.

"Fuck."

"Oh, yeah," under him, Ellis chuckled. Then he froze and, by the way his eyes were widening, Nick knew he'd heard it too.

"Fuck."

Nick glanced at his AK-47, but it was on the other side of the room and right now, with the growls and the pounding of steps growing nearer, it might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

Ellis' hand fumbled on his right and grabbed hold of the shotgun, but it was too little, too fucking little.

"Nick," Ellis said, staring at him with something Nick couldn't quite place. It wasn't fear; his eyes were wide and maybe a little startled but they had something in them, a light.

They looked as if they _knew_.

"No," Nick said. "Not now. Fuck."

A roar shattered the silence. It was getting closer, Nick could feel every step in his bones.

He stood up and pulled Ellis with him. With the front window shattered and the door halfway there as well, they were too exposed. He pushed Ellis to the other side of the kitchen and he opened the first door in front of him.

It turned out to be the supply closet.

The shelves were mostly empty, all the food that could be preserved long gone, leaving only something that once might have been bread and other stuff that he frankly didn't want to look at too closely.

He shoved Ellis in and followed after him, closing the door behind them. There wasn't enough space for two grown men, but considering they'd been sucking face a few seconds before, Nick didn't think Ellis would mind the invasion of his personal space.

It was pitch black inside, except for the light from Ellis' flashlight.

"Fucking Tank," Nick gritted his teeth. "Motherfucking, rotting Tank."

It was so fucking _close_.

"Shut up!" Ellis hissed, and wasn't that a fucking laugh, _Ellis_ telling _him_ to shut up?

"Fuck!" Nick gasped when the Tank roared; this time it sounded as if it were right on the other side of their door.

Ellis turned off the light, and Nick took a startled breath when hands started crawling all over his face until they found his mouth and they pressed gently to effectively shut him up. Nick inhaled sharply and then returned the gesture, until both of them had their hands pressed to the other's mouth.

Their breathing sounded so loud in the dark though, too loud.

He couldn't say how long they stood like that in the dark, forehead to forehead, waiting for the Tank to leave.

Nick was reasonably sure that Ellis was praying very, very hard.

 

*  
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They stumbled back into the safe room breathless and achier than when they left. Rochelle was awake now, and she stood up when they got in.

"What took you so long?" she asked, stepping forward and silently checking them both for injuries.

"Oh, same old, same old," Nick said with a grimace, as he let the AK-47 fall to the ground, the side where he'd gotten scratched starting to hurt. "Encountered a zombie or fifty. A Jockey. A Tank."

Coach looked at him sharply, and Rochelle seemed too stunned to speak.

"But we got water!" Ellis exclaimed and proudly showed them the bag with the now full bottles. "Told ya!"

"A _Tank_?" Coach said. "How the hell you two got away from _that_?"

"Turns out I was right," Nick said. "They don't see you if you don't move and if you keep very, very quiet."

"Or if you hide in the closet," Ellis added.

Nick didn't know if that had been accidental or on purpose, nonetheless it startled a genuine laugh out of him. "Yeah," he said, still chuckling, "or if you hide in the supply closet."

"All's well that ends well," Ellis said, with a big grin.

He kept catching Nick's eyes.

"Here," Coach said, still shaking his head. He handed Nick his watch and then he turned to address all of them. "You two take a break, we'll leave in fifteen minutes."

"Fine by me!" Ellis said, already reloading his shotgun, "I'ma rain lead and hell on those sons o' bitches. Today I feel _fiiine_." He went on humming some song Nick didn't recognize.

Rochelle smiled indulgently at the idiot, and Nick had to quickly look away and frown savagely at the wall to avoid thinking about full lips, the long line of a neck, a body under his shaking, the vibrations of deep moans.

He put his watch back on.

He and Ellis were an hour overdue.

 

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The rest of the day was torture. Standing too close to Ellis made him want to get away from him, and staying away from him made Nick want to get closer. He kept flashing back to the lips and the moans and the smell and the promise of sex he'd felt hard against his thigh before the Tank had interrupted their impromptu make-out session.

You were clearly going insane when the smell of a sweaty, unwashed, covered in zombie blood 23 year old kid turned you on.

And it didn't help that Ellis gave him those secret smiles and glances as if Nick was the coolest thing since rock concerts during a zombie apocalypse.

Both Rochelle and Coach seemed to have cottoned on the fact that something was going on, but Nick fervently hoped that they - Coach, especially - would never find what that _something_ was.

Otherwise, life continued as always during the zombie apocalypse. Shoot a mudman, kill a Boomer before it got close enough to puke on them, throwing pipe bombs around as if sowing for an especially bloody harvest.

And then of course, Ellis babbling away about his Keith buddy and how he got kicked out of a bowling alley one night. It involved a raccoon somehow, but Nick wasn't really sure as Ellis told that particular story in the staying-away-from-Ellis phase.

Just as night was falling they caught sight of spray-painted arrows.

On the way to the safe house they didn't encounter many infected, which was strange, but they took the lucky chance gladly and didn't comment on it. Not even Nick said anything, possibly because the part of his brain not concerned in keeping him alive and on alert was busying itself trying to ignore the memory Ellis' warmth and of his kisses.

The safe house was on two floors, and it had _rooms_.

When Nick glanced sideways at Ellis, he found him already staring back, his eyes strangely blank.

Nick leered openly at him and Ellis looked away, but not quickly enough that Nick didn't notice his blush.

Game _on_, Overalls.

 

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"Just so we are clear, I am _not_ having sex with a dirty, stinky, virgin redneck during the goddamn zombie apocalypse without condoms and lube," Nick said, right before he slammed Ellis against the wall and proceeded to hump his leg.

Ellis snarled and clawed at his jacket, managing to get it only half off. "Is that so?" He panted, grinding against Nick who was grinding against him.

Nick grinned at the hitch in his voice.

"And I-" Ellis got cut off when Nick bit his lips - fuck, _those_ lips - and then invaded his mouth as if trying to steal his breath. Ellis gasped. "I've had sex before," he said, his lips rough from kissing and his eyes wide and dark.

"Fuck," Nick grunted.

"Fffuu-" Ellis echoed, burying his face against Nick's neck and biting down. His cap had fallen off at some point during their scuffle.

And a few minutes, grunts and moans later, they were coming against and all over each other.

Nick scratched his neck where a beard burn was surely forming. He looked down at their clothes with a grimace, but one more type of bodily fluid smeared on his $3000 suit didn't seem so disgusting at this point. And he was too exhausted to care, anyway.

"Come to me after a shower or ten, and I'll show you fucking sex," he said.

Ellis chuckled against his shoulder, his fingers still tangled in Nick's jacket.

 

 

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Virgil's boat was tiny, and frankly Nick was surprised it still floated and didn't fall apart with the added weight of four more people on it. All in all, though, being on a boat meant a lot of water between them and the zombies on the bank.

Sometimes, when the vegetation thinned, they caught sight of them stumbling down into the water as if to reach them, but for every zombie that fell into the water, none re-emerged. That didn't stop Nick and the others from holding their breath every time an infected tried to reach them and failed.

"Thank the Lord for small mercies," Coach breathed as two minutes passed with no zombie making it to the deck of their little boat.

They were all above deck, enjoying the warm autumn day. Coach kept an eye on the bank, while Rochelle had her head thrown back, her eyes closed in the sun, and Ellis was sprawled on the wooden planks, arms thrown wide and eyes closed. He almost looked to be asleep, if not for the fact that he was smiling and humming some sort of song. Not that Nick would put it past him to speak even when he was sleeping.

Nick was sitting at the bow, his fingers itching for a cigarette. "This could almost be a vacation," he said. "If not for the zombies, and the smell and my fucking ruined suit. And the company of course."

Ellis raised his head to frown at him, before the effort seemed to prove too much and he let it fall back down with a muted thud. "Why?" he asked. "What's wrong with us?"

"When I think about a pleasure cruise, I usually think about the Ocean, a yacht and at least four girls wearing nothing more concealing than bikinis the whole trip. Oh, and drinks. Lots of drinks with little umbrellas in them."

Rochelle snorted and shook her head. "God, you must lead such a _boring_ life," she said.

"You don't know the half of it," Nick said. "Boring as fuck."

"That why'd you come down here?" Ellis asked.

"Oh, yeah," Nick snorted. "I came all the way to Buttfuck, Georgia to have _fun_."

"Hey!" Ellis exclaimed, sitting up. "Why you gotta hate Savannah so much? I have fun! With my buddies and the shop and the band. Don't see what's so bad about that."

Nick refrained from correcting him on the use of his tenses. Savannah wasn't likely to have any of those things anymore, it was just a big pile of infected probably destined to be destroyed by fires with no one there to put them out. Just a black scorch mark on the map.

"You coulda stayed where you were," Ellis told him. "Wherever the hell that is."

From the way Ellis was glaring at him, the honeymoon was apparently over. That suited Nick fine, it wasn't like he'd been playing for keeps. Although, having sex again had been nice. Well, humping like teenagers against each other anyway. Semantics.

"I was bored, so I decided, hey why not try conning some hicks out of their money?" Nick shrugged. "Turns out that was even more boring."

"And then?" Rochelle asked, while Coach and Ellis were busy uniting their forces to try and kill Nick with their combined glares. He'd survived his ex-wife, he ignored them.

"And then nothing," he said. "I ended up in a diner at fucking six am on a Sunday, with two grand and a gun. I was about to blow my brains out, but then a son of a bitch smashed through the door and vomited blood all over me, so I emptied the clip in him instead."

The silence his words left behind was so heavy that Nick wondered if the boat would finally sink under its weight.

He took a deep breath, his fingers itched. "Damn, I need a smoke."

 

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One of the planks creaked, but Nick didn't need to open his eyes to know who it was. He knew Ellis by sound and smell, now, and the kid totally failed at stealth.

"Nick?" Ellis called quietly, so as to not disturb Rochelle who was sleeping just a few feet away.

Coach had opted instead to share the cabin with Virgil, muttering something about how this reminded him of his youth of something. Nick hadn't been paying much attention, as he'd been avoiding Ellis' searching eyes, and occasionally Rochelle's, the whole afternoon.

He wasn't certainly going to acknowledge him _now_, not until Ellis got rid of his kicked puppy expression and manned up.

Nick heard a soft sigh and then something touched his left cheek so softly that he barely felt it. He realized it was a caress only when Ellis had already drawn back, leaving behind only the vague perception of fingers.

Ellis left Nick's immediate personal space and he moved around in the room. Nick heard him trying to be quiet, but it was a nearly impossible task with his heavy safety boots. There was a series of grunts and muffled curses and then the sound of something being dragged, and then more curses and grunts and rustling.

Ellis felt close again, and then Nick heard the sound of a zipper and he realized the rustling had been Ellis squeezing his sleeping back right next to Nick's. It took a few moments more for Ellis to settle down, but after that everything was silent once again.

"Nick?" Ellis whispered.

Nick went on pretending to be asleep, not caring if Ellis knew he was faking, if he knew that zombies had made him the lightest of sleepers.

Ellis seemed to give up, but Nick could feel him stare for a long time.

_Fuck_, Nick thought.

Neither of them got much sleep.

 

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"You know," Nick started conversationally, "at this point I'd even accept getting eaten by zombies, if not only for the fact that at least I'd know where I'd stand." Coach glared at him. "But all this, we got a car! We can drive all the way to New Orleans! Oh, no sorry, there's miles of parked cars, I guess you walk from here. And then, hey, a chopper! We're saved! Whoops, the pilot turned into a zombie, better luck next time with the boat. Guess what, we're _out of fucking gas_!" He concluded, shouting the last part. "Figures!"

"Yes, Nick," Rochelle sighed wearily. "We're all part of some sick cosmic joke."

"You know what," Nick said, smashing a zombie's face with the bloody baseball bat he'd found lying around. "That would actually make me feel better. At least, I understand irony and black humor."

"Woah," Ellis exclaimed. "That's a lot of guns."

The Burger Tank indeed housed lots of guns. Some were lying on the tables, others on the counter and Nick saw piles of ammo scattered around.

"And first aid kits," Rochelle said, pointing.

"It's like Christmas!" Ellis grinned. "And pretty lucky too, since Mr. Nice Suit was too busy hating the world to get the gun bag."

Nick rolled his eyes. "I thought you were gonna grab it," he said. "Can't we just forget it, already?"

But since Ellis had the attention span of a goldfish with ADD, he had already forgotten and was going through the guns like one of those annoying old ladies looking for just the perfect piece of produce.

Nick grabbed the first assault rifle he could find, already missing his trusty AK-47. "I don't like this," he said, and when Coach met his eyes he knew he wasn't the only one.

"Now what?" Rochelle asked. "I swear Nick, if you want to die so badly I can shoot you right now so you don't have to wait for the zombies."

Suddenly it was as if the air all around them had been sucked out. They all froze. There was a clang and a splash as the sniper rifle Ellis had been examining slipped from his hands and hit a chair before plunging into the knee-high water.

Rochelle was staring at Nick with a stricken, wide-eyed look. "I- I mean," she started, but Nick waved at her, unconcerned.

"Whatever," he shrugged, "what I meant was, this looks staged. Someone brought all this stuff here. This looks like a last stand."

"Maybe they jus' needed to wait it out until the rescue came," Ellis said. "They probably got evac'ed by boat and they didn't need the stuff anymore. On account they were saved, ya know?"

"Right," Nick said. "Of course."

"Shall we get a move on?" Coach said. "That gas ain't gonna get to Virgil's boat by itself."

Everyone double-checked their weapons and their supplies before they all moved out of the Burger Tank as one.

"You wanna hear a prediction?" Nick asked out loud and continued without waiting for a reply. "There's not gonna be any gas. Watch."

 

 

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It was a movie, Nick decided. There was no other explanation. Only one of those cheap horror movies would put its protagonists through so much shit all at once. They even had the fucking _storm_. All they needed now was the music highlighting the moments of suspense.

Not that the wails that reverberated throughout the whole abandoned mill weren't enough to chill the blood in Nick's veins.

With the rain pouring down as it was, the water level had climbed and now they barely struggled along. Of course the gas had to end right before a hurricane. Nick just hoped Virgil still had a boat to go back to. If they were stranded here they were screwed.

The gangways weren't fun the first time around, when it wasn't as dark, and it wasn't raining as hard, but now they were positively death traps. Nick could feel the metal plank under his feet groan and sway.

"Careful," he told the others following him.

A bolt of lightning cut the ink black sky in half and Nick felt the crack of the thunder in his bones. "Stay close!" he yelled, trying to be heard over the whistling of the wind, but his voice was lost to the storm even to his own ears.

He crouched down, trying to offer less surface to the wind and the rain and waited it out. Going forward now would be suicide as he couldn't even see his own hands in front of him; misstepping and falling a long, long way down would be very easy right now.

The wind finally died down, even if not completely, and Nick stood up. "You guys ok?" he asked, scanning the way in front of them to see if any zombies were coming. He received affirmatives from both Coach and Rochelle, and he remained still for a moment, waiting for Ellis'.

There was just the sound of rain.

He turned around. "Where is Ellis?" He asked, exchanging glances with the other two.

Ellis had been standing between Rochelle and Coach, but now they all were staring bemusedly at the empty space he'd left behind.

With the storm calming down, Nick was able to pick up on a sound through the wind and the rain; a sound that chilled the blood in his veins.

It was the half-wail, half-growl of a witch getting angry, and it came from the ground below them, and if Ellis had slipped during the storm...

As if on cue, Rochelle gasped and pointed down. "Ellis!"

Nick turned to see where she was pointing and saw Ellis trying to keep as far away as he could from the witch that was sitting only a few feet from him. He was still too close, though, too fucking close, and now the witch had started to turn towards him, her growls louder and angrier.

Ellis looked up at them. "I slipped," he said. "Sorry, y'all." Even at this distance Nick could see his eyes wide and burning with a strange light in them.

The witch was slowly getting up from her crouch, and Ellis raised his automatic rifle, but he was stuck in a dead end and at such close quarter he'd never stand a chance. Nick knew he knew it.

"Ellis," Coach yelled, his voice caught between a warning and a plea.

"Fuck this," Nick spat.

He crouched down and opened fire.

The witch gave a blood-curling scream and whipped around to face Nick, her red eyes glowing unnaturally in the darkness. She instantly forgot Ellis and shot up the rusting metal to get to where Nick was.

"That's right, bitch!" Nick yelled and never raised the finger from his trigger. "Eat lead, you freak." He flipped his light back on for good measure. "Fuck you!"

When he'd come up with his plan - if it could be called a plan - he might have miscalculated a little, though, because the witch was already on the gangway, the fast bitch, and made a beeline for Nick.

He cursed and hoped like hell she would fall under his, Rochelle's and Coach's combined fire before he had to reload, otherwise he was totally,_royally_ screwed.

In the end, he didn't have to worry about reloading, as between one blink of the eye and the next, she was on him. His AK-47 flew out of his hands when she swung at him with her claws. It clattered once, twice, on the gangway before Nick heard a splash and his gun was lost forever.

He gave a hoarse scream when her next swing hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him down and ripping away cloth and skin alike. He brought up his arms in a desperate try at protecting his face and neck from the onslaught, but it wasn't like it was going to be much help if she gutted him like a fish.

For a moment, he wished he believed in god, so his prayers would mean something at least.

With the battle-cry of 'Die, bitch!' - god or no god - his prayers were answered in the form of Coach heaving the witch off of him and killing her with a point-blank head-shot.

Nick gave a weak chuckle. "Damn, Coach," he rasped. "You must be the most badass motherfucking guardian angel _ever_."

"Yeah, yeah." Coach shook his head and helped him back to his feet. "Damn, that was close, man."

"You tell me," Nick snorted, checking himself over. He was bleeding, but aside from the four gashes on his chest he seemed to be fine, nothing missing, no vital organs hanging out. "Let's not do this ever, ever again."

Heavy step echoed around them and they all turned to see Ellis running towards them. He was dripping from head to toe, but then they all were even if they hadn't taken a dive in the waist-high water.

"Nick!" Ellis called out. "Nick!"

"Don't run dipshit," Nick barked. "I ain't shooting the next witch you fall on top of."

Ellis stopped only when he was in front of him, almost skidding to a halt it was so slippery. He seemed undecided on what to do for a moment or two. "Here," he said, finally, as he handed Nick the AK-47 he'd lost. "You dropped this." His eyes were wide and shining, and his body almost thrummed with nervous energy.

Nick found the whole picture quite familiar, but it took him a few moments to realize that he'd seen Ellis this way only in semi-darkness, as they were panting and thrusting against each other. It suddenly dawned on him that Ellis' earlier hesitation had been due to the fact that he'd been about to pounce on Nick and ride off the adrenaline rush in a way that wasn't exactly appropriate with other people watching, especially if one of the said people was Coach.

Fuck, the kid got off on danger, and Nick was a professional gambler and conman; turned on by the thrill of the game didn't even begin to cover it. With their lives now being as they were, nothing but danger and pure adrenaline, they were _doomed_.

Well, his money had never been on them making it out of here alive, at least now he was getting sex. Lots and lots of sex, if he'd read Ellis' body-language right.

Nick took his AK-47 from Ellis. "Thanks," he said, letting his fingers linger on Ellis' wrist. He gave a small tug and stared at Ellis for a long moment to make his intent clear.

'You. Me. Orgasms. Soon,' he tried to convey through his eyes.

Apparently he was very well-versed in eye-communication, because Ellis' whole face reddened and his eyes said, 'Oh hell _yes_.'

Nick leered and let go of his wrist.

"We should take a look at those wounds," Rochelle said, stepping closer, a first aid kit already in her hands.

"Just wrap some gauze around my chest, it's just a scratch," Nick told her. "I want to leave as soon as possible." He went on to say, "and you try and keep away from the bitches, Overalls."

"Hey!" Ellis exclaimed. "I slipped! It ain't like I did it on purpose. Coulda happened to any one of us."

"Sure," Nick shrugged. "But it happened to _you_."

Rochelle poked him in the ribs. "Stop squirming, Mister," she said. "I'm trying to wrap you up."

"Yes, ma'am."

Coach sighed. "We don't got time for this," he said, apologetically. "Let's get a move on people."

"Almost done." Rochelle ripped the gauze with her teeth and tied a knot. "This should hold for now," she said, but the blood was already seeping, creating red splotches in the white cloth.

They reloaded their weapons and, keeping an ear out for any more witches, they started once again on their way back.

As soon as they were off the gangway, Rochelle reached his side and nudged Nick with her elbow. "That was awfully selfless of you," she said, grinning. "What happened to the cynical asshole in the $3000 suit?"

Nick snorted and shook his head. "Oh, he's still here," he said with a shrug. "Only his suit is worth shit right now."

 

*  
**  
***  
**  
*

 

Nick slept for a whole day. Twenty-four hours without worrying about whose shift it was on guard duty, or whether the doors and the walls would sustain an horde or one of those huge fuckers with an attitude problem.

Twenty-four hours of deep, perfect sleep.

He woke up groggy, with a foul taste in his mouth and his stomach protesting after a long diet of nothing more than snacks and canned food.

He opened the door and groaned when the light of the sun almost blinded him. And to think there had been a time when he'd function on nothing more than four hours of sleep six days a week and then sleep late on the seventh - usually a Monday - while the world woke up at ungodly hours, bitter and in desperate need of caffeine.

He'd always been a night person, and his choice in occupation certainly added to this propensity. But walking around at night was dangerous now, and you had to grab sleep whenever you could and as long as you could.

So Nick had slept for an entire day.

On the main deck, Rochelle was leaning against the rail, looking out to the waters, her machine gun by her leg. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses she must have borrowed from Virgil.

There was no wind, and they were moving slowly; it was a hot day, despite it being mid-autumn. Standing still on the deck, in the total silence, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on his face and on his head, he felt strangely light for the first time in days.

Rochelle didn't acknowledge him, but Nick had made no effort to climb the steps quietly, and her shoulders had tightened for a fraction of second, before relaxing again.

A few feet from her sat Coach. He was sitting with his back against the rail and his legs stretched in front of him. He was eyeing the fishing rod he had lying in front of him.

"Sleep well?" Coach asked, when Nick's shadow obscured his light.

Nick ignored the sarcasm and answered truthfully. "No," he said. "But I _slept_." He sat down next to him, leaning his head back against the wood. He closed his eyes in the sun.

Fuck, he missed cigarettes.

"Looking to fish us some dinner?" Nick asked.

"I ain't sure I wanna see what there is to fish out of the river," Coach said quietly.

"I hear ya," Nick snorted. "Make you a deal: you fish, I'll shoot anything that doesn't resemble dinner."

Coach gave a low chuckle. "Who cooks then?"

"I cook for shit," Nick said.

"Don't look at me," Rochelle said without even turning around.

"Whatever," Nick shrugged. "It's some fish and fire, not fucking _langouste au gratin_, how hard can it be?"

Rochelle turned towards him with a frown. She mouthed '_langouste_' a few times.

"Lobster," Nick told her. "But it's fancier because it's French."

Rochelle laughed a little. It still sounded tight and nervous, though. "It'll be like a regular Sunday dinner in the family. Fancy stuff and our good clothes."

"Yeah, Sunday dinner," Nick nodded, despite never having experienced a Sunday dinner in his life. Then it occurred to him. "Hey, what day is it?"

Rochelle widened her eyes, almost scared, and quickly turned away, her shoulders tense again. Coach stared at him for a few moments, at loss of words. Coach had to know what day it was, he'd been officiating a sort of Mass together with Ellis a couple of times, but then he'd stopped for some reason Nick didn't know. Maybe he'd been knocked out, maybe he'd been too tired. Maybe he'd had other things to worry about.

Then again, all of their days and all of their hours seemed to melt and fuse together in an undefined series of events, endless running from one place to another. It felt like months had passed, when it may as well been just a couple of weeks.

"Whatever," Nick shrugged. "It's not like I have appointments to keep." He sniffed his shirt and grimaced at the bitter tang of sweat and the revoltingly sweet smell of rotting blood. "Fuck, I need a shower. And a laundromat."

Both Rochelle and Coach seemed relieved at the change of topic. "There's a small shower in the bathroom. The water tank isn't very big, so your best bet is showering with your clothes on."

Nick snorted. "_Great_."

 

 

*  
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***  
**  
*

 

Ellis woke up just as Nick had just shed his shirt and was trying to figure if getting the bandages on his chest wet was worth it. He didn't notice it at first, but he heard the rustling of cloth and felt eyes watching him.

 

He turned around and there was Ellis, half sitting in his sleeping bag and staring at him.

 

"What?" he said, but he didn't get much else out, because in the blink of an eye, Ellis was across the room and kissing him.

 

Well, some approximation of it, at least. Ellis' mouth smashed against his and their noses were uncomfortably mushed together. With a grunt, Nick grabbed Ellis' shoulders and pushed him back. "What the hell?" he exclaimed. "If you were aiming for rough and desperate, you just failed. _Hard_."

 

Ellis took a step back and scratched his neck, his eyes downcast. "Um, yeah. Sorry," he said, embarrassed.

 

Nick sighed and let go of him to continue with the undressing. He itched all over with sweat, dirt and blood. He needed a shower, _yesterday_. "Look, I appreciate the sentiment," he said. "But now is not a good time, I'm about to grab a shower, you should try it, too," he narrowed his eyes. "_After_ I'm done."

 

Ellis nodded.

 

"Great," he continued. "Why don't you go join the others topside?"

 

Ellis mumbled something that Nick couldn't make out, not that he payed much attention to it, as he was trying to unstrap his thigh holster. The damn thing must have gotten stuck and wouldn't come off.

 

With a growl and a curse Nick tugged and it came free. He checked the gun and the ammo and wished not for the first time that he had grabbed his cleaning kit before running to the motel.

 

He noticed, absent-minded, that Ellis was still there and, more importantly, that he was _silent_. He glanced up at him. "Still here, Overalls?"

 

Ellis' eyes widened when he noticed he'd been caught staring and he quickly looked away, but not before Nick could work out what he'd been staring at.

 

"Hey, Ellis," he said and waited until Ellis had looked back at him. He made a show of reloading the gun. "What do you care? It's not like we would've met, anyway."

 

Ellis looked down at his feet. "Yes, but-"

 

"Shut the fuck up," he cut him off. Ellis pouted. The goddamn kid _pouted_. Nick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Ellis. I'm not gonna blow my brains out anytime soon," he said.

 

Ellis flinched. "You don't gotta be like that."

 

"Like a bastard son of a bitch, you mean?" Nick snorted. "Please. Anyway, it's not like it's a big deal, I was just bored of out my mind."

 

Ellis nodded and met his eyes. "And now?"

 

Nick rolled his eyes. "Now?" He said. "Now I'm running for my life, I'm tired, achy and like the punchline of a very sick joke. But bored? It's safe to assume that I'm not bored anymore."

 

Ellis grinned as if Nick had just told him that he could drive the goddamn race car through the zombie apocalypse for the rest of his days.

 

"Now, go away," Nick said. "I've got a date with a hot shower, and right now that's more appealing than you."

 

 

*  
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*

 

 

He emerged an hour later, a towel wrapped around his hips as he carried his damp clothes. He'd gotten a cigarette from Virgil and it was now precariously hanging from his lips. It was a shitty brand, but it didn't matter much right now.

Ellis had joined the others on the deck while Nick was away and when he took in his appearance, his eyes widened and his mouth remained open mid-story.

"What the hell, man?" Coach exclaimed, but he was smiling.

"I took a shower with my clothes," Nick said, taking a drag from the cigarette. He grimaced in distaste when his still wet fingers left a damp spot on the cigarette. "Too bad my change of clothes is in a suitcase hundreds of miles from here."

"It ain't proper," Ellis said, his eyes darting around trying to avoid looking at him. Nick stared at him for a long moment and leered openly when he finally managed to hold his eyes for a couple of seconds. Ellis looked away, all flustered. "I mean, with a lady present and all."

"I'm sure I got nothing she ain't seen before," Nick told him.

Rochelle snorted. "You _wish_."

"Nick!" Ellis exclaimed. "Just- Just put on some clothes, all right?"

"Mine are damp," Nick said, carefully arranging said clothes on the wooden planks to dry in the afternoon sun. "They'll be dry soon enough, I'm sure the lady here will bear with my undressed state a little longer."

Ellis nodded vaguely and turned his attention to the shore, but Nick could still see him staring from the corner of his eye. He smirked. "It's not like we ain't seen each other almost naked anyway," he said. "Remember when that Hunter bit you in the ass? Man, good times."

"I thought we weren't never gonna talk about that!" Ellis cried out.

"You said _you_ never wanted to talk about it again," Nick corrected him. "I never agreed to anything. I'll be sure to tell your grandchildren how their heroic granpa Ellis managed to get wounded during the zombie apocalypse. You see kids, since he's such a graceless klutz he stumbled over his own feet and almost fell on his face, so the zombies pounced on him when he was ass in the air."

Ellis glared at him, but his face wasn't made for indignation - or at least, Nick couldn't take it seriously when Ellis got all miffed about something. Usually Jimmy Gibbs Jr. and those loud, poor excuses for rock music.

Nick chuckled. "That is, of course, assuming you'll be able to trick a girl into bearing your children."

Rochelle nudged him with her elbow and she gave him a disapproving frown. Nick shrugged, and yes, maybe he'd gone a little over the top with the teasing, but Ellis made it so easy. "Whatever," he said. "Just joking."

Ellis seemed to relax at once, and Rochelle stopped glaring at him.

Getting bit in the ass, funny. Impugning Ellis' sex appeal, not funny. Check.

Only, it _was_ funny. It was fucking ironic, but Nick wasn't sure Ellis would appreciate the irony at all. Rochelle probably would, but Nick wasn't going to tell her about the little sounds Ellis made, or how even dirty and unwashed and coated in zombie guts Ellis smelled so fucking _alluring_. He had a feeling she would disapprove.

So Nick just sat back, his legs crossed at the ankle and smoked his damp cigarette.

"It's just weird, you know man," Ellis said, and was that a blush? "I mean, I'm used to seeing you all dressed up and suddenly you're- not."

Rochelle snickered. Nick just sighed. "Just give it up, Ellis."

"S'just weird," Ellis muttered. "Kinda reminds me of this one time my buddy Dave got locked out of his own house. His parents weren't home, y'see, so he lived in his own backyard for like, _a week_, but he only had one change of clothes, so-"

"Ellis, shut up and help Coach with our zombies _au gratin_," Nick said, savoring what could possibly be his last cigarette for a very long time.

"What?"

"Come here, young'un."

Rochelle looked at them, a small smile on her lips.

Nick closed his eyes in the warmth of the sun and told himself that for now, that was enough.

 

 

*  
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***  
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*

 

Nick was sitting on his cot, trying to clean his guns as best as he could, when the door slammed open and Ellis burst inside.

"What the hell, Overalls?" Nick asked, glaring at him.

Ellis was still dripping all over the place from the shower he had taken, his filthy clothes bunched up in his arms, his eyes were wide and bright. He closed the door with a kick, almost toppling when he slipped on the wood planks and he let everything drop from his arms, revealing the towel tied around his hips.

With three steps he was invading Nick's space, grinning down at him.

"What?" Nick barked out.

"You know," Ellis said. "I took a shower. Or ten."

Nick stared at him for a long moment. "Did you?" he said, calmly.

"Ye-" Ellis started, but didn't get much further than that because Nick had grabbed his wrist and tugged.

They tumbled down on the cot and with a sharp flick of Nick's wrist, Ellis' towel dropped on the floor, leaving a very naked and wet Ellis lying on top of him.

Ellis chuckled, Nick just did his best to touch him all over. He buried his nose in the wet curls of his hair and inhaled deeply. "God, I _miss_ soap," he almost groaned, and right now the smell of soap risked to get a place in Nick's list of turn-ons.

Fuck.

Fucking zombie apocalypse.

Ellis chuckled again, but this time there was a catch in his breath. "Man, I hope Coach ain't gonna sleep in here tonight," he said.

"Right now?" Nick said, turning them around and raising up on his elbows. "I don't really fucking care."

He bent down to kiss and bite Ellis' lips, what they were meant for.

"Oh, yeah," Ellis said, tugging Nick's shirt from his shoulders, his arousal already poking Nick in the thigh. "Fuck, yeah."

 

 

*  
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*

 

The cot wasn't made for two adults lying side by side. They managed, though.

"I think I need another shower, now," Ellis said, scratching his lower stomach.

"Huh-uh," Nick mumbled, not really paying attention to the words as much as the hypnotizing motions of long fingers against soft curls. "You know what?" He finally said, glancing up at Ellis.

"What?"

"Sometimes, Overalls, you are a fucking _genius_."

Ellis beamed for the whole day after that.

 

 

*  
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*

 

 

They stood on the dock for a long minute after Virgil had left.

"So, New Orleans," Rochelle said. "Here we are."

Nick checked his gun again. They had run out of ammo during their little search for gas and right now, with the prospect of running through a whole city infested with zombies, New Orleans didn't fulfill the hope for certain rescue.

"I could've been in Vegas, right now, you know," Nick said, because it was his place to be the negative guy among them.

Rochelle snorted. "Yeah, Nick. Think about all those zombie strippers," she said and Nick gave an involuntary shudder.

"Ya think the infection will spread up there too?" Ellis said.

They all fell silent.

"Shall we get a move on?" Coach said finally, once again the voice of leadership.

They all mumbled an affirmative and got ready for the final rush.

 

 

*  
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*

 

Nick helped Ellis and Rochelle climb the last rungs of the ladder as Coach covered their backs. With a grunt he hauled Rochelle up.

"We made it to the bridge," Rochelle said, wonder in her voice.

"Unbelievable, huh?" Nick said, with a quirk of his eyebrows. "Who's Mr. Negative now?"

"That's Ms. Negative to you," she said. "But yeah-"

The rest of her words was drowned out by the roar of a fighter jet as it sped over them. Then there was a blinding light in the distance and the earth shook with the deafening boom of an explosion.

"Oh, _come on_!" Nick cried out. "Great! Now they're fucking _bombing_ us! Don't make it too easy on us, guys."

Next to him Rochelle sighed and rubbed her face, defeated. "That's taxpayer dollars at work."

Nick snorted. "Well, they never got _my_ dollars."

"And we're all very surprised by that," Rochelle told him, checking her ammo.

"Well, I wouldn't have paid taxes either if I knew they were just gonna bomb me," Ellis said with a shrug. He was so calm that Nick had to wonder once again whether it was because of his optimistic nature, or just because the grave seriousness of their situation hadn't made its way into his thick skull, yet.

"No time to waste," Coach said. "Let's go people."

"Yeah," Nick nodded. "But there better be some big goddamn cake at the end."

 

*  
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*

 

Ellis never strayed far from his side, cracking jokes and commenting on Nick's kills with overabundant glee. Nick didn't know if it depended on the fact that they had a little affair going on, or that now that rescue was finally a possible outcome he was trying to get all he could before Nick left, just like he'd promised when they met.

Knowing Ellis' propensity for living in the present without worrying about the consequences, it was probably the former, but their fucking had acquired a desperate and wild flavor that it didn't have before getting to New Orleans. At least, on Ellis' part.

They had gotten less careful too, getting it on whenever they could, trying to keep silent when they were sharing a room with others and letting go only when they were in another. As if the thin walls could make a difference.

Nick guessed it was around their second safe house that Rochelle and Coach noticed their booty calls. At least that's when Rochelle and Coach both started to glare disapprovingly at him. Nick ignored them. After all it wasn't like Ellis wasn't an adult making his own choices, despite his ten-year-old attitude.

He didn't think any of them would mention it, but Rochelle surprised him. In hindsight, he shouldn't have doubted her. For a girl, she had a set of brass balls.

"I really hope you know what you're doing," she told him, when Coach and Ellis were out of earshot.

"I'm thirty-five," Nick said. "I've been around the block a couple of times."

She glared at him and took the safety off the Uzi she had found, as if to remind him that he wouldn't like her getting angry. Nick shook his head. "Look, we're both consenting adults here, if that's what you're asking."

"I know that, Nick," she said. "But Ellis is... _Ellis_. He's a kid. I just- what the hell were you guys thinking?"

Nick shrugged. "You know what they say about life and death situations..." He said. "The first urge is to pass on genes to preserve the species."

Rochelle gave him a long look."There's not going to be much 'preserving the species' with him, Nick," she said.

Nick, despite himself and the fact that he hated people poking their noses in his business, laughed out loud at that. "The dick doesn't know the difference."

Rochelle gave a disgusted sound. "For god's sake," she grimaced. "Just- Just don't hurt him," she said after a while.

"Sweetheart, if he ends up getting hurt, it's going to be the zombies' fault, not mine."

She gave him a long look and shook her head. "I'm warning you."

"Duly noted," he said. "Shall we catch up with the others, or do you want to exchange more pleasantries?"

 

 

*  
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*

 

"Chopper is on the other side," Ellis said, putting the radio down, "pilot said we just need to cross the bridge and he'll fly us out of here."

"We 'just' need to cross the bridge?" Nick said. "Great. Piece of cake."

"Oh, and we got ten minutes then he's leavin'," Ellis added.

"Of course he is," Nick snorted.

"Come on, people," Coach said. "We're rescued!"

"I'm lowering the bridge," Rochelle said. "Watch out, it's going to make a lot of noise."

Nick brought up his shotgun, ready to run. "Fair warning," he said. "If this pilot turns to be infected, too, I'm gonna scream, no matter how undignified it's going to be."

"You and me both," Rochelle said and punched the button. "Here they come!"

With a groan of metal and the scream of dozens of infected the bridge lowered slowly.

 

 

*  
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*

 

Nick ran. His lungs burned with the effort, and he'd lost his shotgun when a Charger had crashed into him. Now he was holding the fire-axe with a white-knuckled grip and didn't even bother to kill any of the zombies coming up at them; he just shoved and shoved to make a clean path for himself and Coach, who was coming up behind him.

He kept his eyes firmly on Rochelle and Ellis, running up in front of him, squeezing bullets out of their machine guns as if they had plenty. It didn't matter, though, the last stretch of road was coming up, and Nick could already see the chopper's whirling rotors.

There was a roar and a car went flying, crashing down at Nick's left. Nick cursed and ground his teeth, willing his legs to go faster; they were so _close_, he wasn't going to let a fucking Tank slow him down when he could almost taste rescue.

Ahead of him Ellis had turned presumably to see what the commotion was, and when his expression went from surprised to horrified Nick was very much afraid that the Tank was closer than he'd thought and that he was going to die very, very soon.

And then Ellis yelled, "Coach!" and Nick understood.

He chopped the head off the zombie rushing towards him and turned around as well. Coach had fallen back - running across a zombie-infected bridge wasn't probably the best thing when you had a bad knee - and while the Tank wasn't on him, it was steadily and quickly gaining ground.

"Fuck," Nick muttered to himself and, against his better judgement, he made his way back to Coach. "What the hell are you doing, Nick?!" He yelled to himself, as he ran. "That's a fucking _Tank_ and you're running towards it with nothing but a fucking axe!"

Something sailed past Nick's head and struck the Tank in the face with deadly precision, setting it on fire.

"Great!" he cried out. "Now you're running towards a Tank _on fire_ with nothing but an axe! And you're fucking talking to yourself!"

By then Nick had reached Coach's side, but then so had the Tank. A very big, very angry Tank on fire.

"Fuck my life!" He yelled, dodging a huge fist while Coach emptied his shotgun into the giant beast, with Rochelle and Ellis providing covering fire.

"I think I'm insane!" Nick cried out and sank the axe into the Tank's back with all of his strength. It remained stuck and Nick fell back when the Tank tried to shrug it off.

Apparently it didn't really like being hit with axes, because it suddenly decided not to bother with Coach anymore and to turn its attention to Nick. Nick who was ass on the ground and painfully unarmed. "Well, shit."

And then, with a growl, the Tank toppled sideways and died, the last of the flames from the molotov dying as well.

Nick stared wide-eyed at the still mountain of muscle for a long moment. "That was too fucking close," he said at last.

"No shit," Coach said, bent over and panting from the run.

"Come on, big guy," Nick said, standing up. "I'll give you a hand, you watch my back as I find myself weaponless at the moment."

Coach nodded and put an arm across Nick's shoulders, letting him bear half of his weight.  
As they stumbled, making their way to Ellis and Rochelle, Nick heard Coach chuckle and he gave him a frowning look. "What?"

"Who the hell puts a rescue chopper at the end of a goddamn bridge crawling with zombies?" He said, a little out of breath.

Nick snorted. "We make it out of here alive," he said. "I'm gonna buy you a goddamn fleet of chocolate choppers, just you watch."

 

*  
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***  
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*

 

They stumbled into the chopper and Rochelle screamed for the pilot to go, fucking go. The hatch was only half-way closed and Coach and Ellis had to shoot some zombies who had managed to hang onto it as they took off, while Nick just flipped them off, having lost all of his weapons.

"That. Was. Awesome!" Ellis exclaimed. "You were awesome, man! Did you see him running towards that Tank on fire?" He gave a hearty laugh.

"You guys okay back there?" The pilot's voice came through the radio. "Any wounded?"

"We're all fine," Rochelle replied. "Just a little banged up."

"Just don't turn into a zombie," Nick added. He settled back against the metal wall and leaned his head back, closing his eyes.

"They're taking us to a cruise ship," Rochelle said. "With all the other survivors."

"Hear that, Nick?" Ellis chuckled. "Maybe they even serve those umbrella drinks you like so much."

"Sure, Overalls," he muttered. Here's to hoping they don't shoot us on sight like those poor bastards we saw, he wanted to say, but for once pessimism could wait. They were being rescued, and until the chopper didn't crash down or they made them stand against a wall, they were safe.

And Nick was so fucking tired of not being safe.

They were silent for a couple of minutes, their breaths heavy from the run the only sound apart from the noise of the chopper. And then Ellis started laughing; deep, heavy laughter. Soon Coach and Rochelle joined in, Nick just relaxed and reveled in the sounds of relief.

Rochelle's voice cracked and her laughter turned into almost sobs, until they died down too. Nick glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He dropped an arm around her shoulders and gave a squeeze. "Come on, sweetheart," he said. "The worst that could happen now is ending up sharing a room with Ellis."

Rochelle chuckled. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of getting between you two."

Nick's eyes shot up to gauge Coach's reaction, but the man didn't seem to have heard or to care much at the moment. Not that he could blame him, they all were exhausted.

Except Ellis, apparently. He couldn't even seem to sit still, his face had split up in an enormous grin. "So y'all got any plans after this?"

"I still got these," Rochelle said, taking out the camera phone. It was all scratched and the screen must have cracked at some point, but Nick figured she could still get the photos inside. "I'm going to write something. Maybe a book."

"If you publish any photo of me or my real name I'm gonna hunt you down, sweetheart," Nick said, off-handedly.

She, of course, ignored him.

"I think I'm gonna find Keith," Ellis said. "And maybe go back to Savannah when the zombies are gone."

If this Keith guy had survived even the half of the shit Ellis said he had, it was possible he had survived the zombies, Nick figured. Maybe with absurd injuries, but survived nonetheless.

No one pointedly asked about Ellis' family.

"My wife was up in Milwaukee with her sister," Coach said. "I'll try to get a word out to her."

"You got a wife, Coach?" Ellis asked, dumbfounded.

Even Nick did a double-take. But then again, they really didn't know much of each other.

And then the dreaded question came. "And you, Nick?" Ellis asked, and despite the fact that it sounded just like any other innocent question, Nick heard the _real_ question underneath it.

He shrugged. "I don't know, yet," he said. "I guess I'll be sticking around, see what happens."

"Oh yeah?" Rochelle said. "I thought you weren't. Now, I remember that well, because it's one of the first things you said to us." Her voice dropped as she mimicked Nick's words with an exaggerated sneer, "'Name's Nick, but don't bother learning it 'cause I ain't sticking around.'"

"I don't sound like that," Nick said with a frown. "And anyway I changed my mind."

"Oh, really?" Rochelle said, arching an eyebrow. "What made you?" She asked then, sneaking a glance at Ellis.

Nick shrugged. "Zombies," he said, glancing up at Ellis. "Zombies change everything."

"Amen to that, brother," Coach said. "Amen to that."

With a resounding boom the bridge exploded in a fireball worthy of Bruce Willis movies. The shockwave shook the fuselage around them.

Ellis laughed out loud.


End file.
